In a stark departure from the last few years, one of the most debated state tax policy issues in 2013 has been the gasoline tax (PDF).  Until this February, it had been almost three years since any state’s lawmakers approved an increase or reform of their gasoline tax.  That changed when Wyoming Governor Matt Mead signed into law a 10 cent gas tax hike passed by his state’s legislature.  Since then, Virginia has reformed its gas tax to grow over time alongside gas prices, and Maryland has both increased and reformed its gas tax.  By the time states’ 2013 legislative sessions come to a close, the list of states having improved their gas taxes is likely to be even longer.

Massachusetts appears to be the most likely candidate for gas tax reform.  Both the House and Senate have passed bills immediately raising the state gas tax by 3 cents per gallon, and reforming the tax so that its flat per-gallon amount keeps pace with inflation in the future (see chart here).  In late 2011, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that Massachusetts is among the states where inflation has been most damaging to the state transportation budget—costing some $451 million in revenue per year relative to where the gas tax stood in 1991 when it was last raised.  Governor Deval Patrick has expressed frustration that legislators passed plans lacking more revenue for education—in sharp contrast to his own plan to increase the income tax—but he has also signaled that there may be room for compromise.

Vermont lawmakers are also giving very serious consideration to gas tax reform.  At the Governor’s urging, the House passed a bill increasing the portion of Vermont’s gas tax that already grows alongside gas prices.  The bill also reforms the flat-rate portion of Vermont’s gas tax to grow with inflation.  The Senate is now debating the idea, and early reports indicate that the package may be tweaked to rely slightly more on diesel taxes in order to reduce the size of the increase on gasoline.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has also proposed raising and reforming his state’s gasoline tax.  While Pennsylvania’s tax is technically supposed to grow alongside gas prices, an obsolete tax cap limits the rate from rising when gas prices exceed $1.25 per gallon.  Corbett would like to remove that cap in order to improve the sustainability of the state’s revenues, and members of his administration have been traveling the state to explain how doing so would benefit Pennsylvanians.  While the legislature has yet to act on his plan, the fact that it has the backing of the state’s Chamber of Business and Industry is likely to help its chances.

In New Hampshire, the Governor has said she is open to raising the state gas tax and the House has passed a bill doing exactly that.  But there are indications that lawmakers in the state Senate might continue procrastinating on raising the tax, as the state has done for over two decades.

Nevada lawmakers are discussing a gas tax increase following the release of a report showing that the state’s outdated transportation system is costing drivers $1,500 per year.  ITEP analyzed a gas tax proposal receiving consideration in the Nevada House and found that even with the increase, the state’s gas tax rate (adjusted for inflation) would still remain low relative to its levels in years past.

Iowa lawmakers have been debating a gas tax increase for a number of years, and there may be enough support in the legislature to finally see one enacted into law.  The major stumbling block is that Governor Branstad will only agree to raise the gas tax if it’s part of a larger package that cuts revenue overall—particularly revenues from the property tax.  As we’ve explained in the past, such a move would effectively benefit the state’s roads at the expense of its schools.

Earlier this year, Washington State House lawmakers unveiled a plan raising the state’s gas tax by 10 cents per gallon and increasing vehicle registration fees.  Senate leaders are reportedly less excited about the idea of a gasoline tax hike, though there are indications they would consider such an increase if it were to pass the House.  While talk of a 10 cent increase has since quieted down, there are rumors that a smaller increase could be enacted.

Unfortunately, some states where the chances of gas tax reform once appeared promising have since begun to move away from the idea.  In Michigan, while the Governor and the state Chamber of Commerce have voiced strong support for generating additional revenue through the gas tax, neither the House nor the Senate appears likely to vote in favor of such a reform this year.  Meanwhile, the chances for a gas tax increase in Minnesota seem to have faded after the Governor came out against an increase and the House subsequently unveiled a tax plan that leaves the gas tax untouched.

Overall, 2013 has already been a significant year for state gas tax reform.  Both Maryland and Virginia have abandoned their unsustainable flat gas taxes in favor of a better gas tax that grows over time, just like construction costs inevitably will.  Hopefully, within the next few months, more states will have followed their lead.

UPDATE: As of March 29, 2013 this plan has passed both the House and Senate and is expected to be signed into law by the Governor.

This week, the Maryland House will vote on a plan to raise and reform the state’s gasoline tax. The plan is very similar to one proposed by Governor Martin O’Malley that our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), analyzed when it was released two weeks ago.

An updated chart from ITEP shows that Maryland’s flat gas tax has long been declining as inflation has chipped away at its value.  If the legislature does not raise the gas tax, ITEP projects that by 2014 Maryland’s gas tax rate will reach its lowest (inflation adjusted) level in 91 years. Only in 1922 and 1923 did Maryland levy a lower gas tax.

Moreover, the gas tax increase under consideration in the House, like the one proposed by the Governor, is actually very modest. The plan (which would tie the gas tax to both inflation and gas prices) would result in roughly a 12 cent increase by 2015. That’s significantly less than the nearly 16 cent increase that ITEP found would be needed to return Maryland’s gas tax to its purchasing power as of 1992, when it was last raised. Taking an even longer-term perspective, ITEP finds that Maryland’s inflation-adjusted gas tax rate has historically averaged 41.1 cents per gallon.  If the House plan is enacted, the inflation-adjusted rate over the next decade would average just 32.8 cents.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley recently unveiled his plan to raise and reform his state’s gasoline tax.  Local TV stations predictably responded by interviewing drivers unhappy with the high price of gas, while (also predictably) failing to explain that Maryland’s gas taxes are not to blame for those high prices.

A new chart from our partner organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows that Maryland’s flat gas tax has long been declining as inflation has chipped away at its value.  If the legislature does not act on the Governor’s recommendation, ITEP projects that by 2014 Maryland’s gas tax rate will reach its lowest (inflation adjusted) level in 91 years.  Only in 1922 and 1923 did Maryland levy a lower gas tax.

Moreover, the gas tax increase proposed by the Governor is actually very modest.  The plan (which would tie the gas tax to both inflation and gas prices) would result in roughly a 9 cent increase by 2014.  That’s significantly less than the nearly 16 cent increase that ITEP found would be needed to return Maryland’s gas tax to its purchasing power as of 1992, when it was last raised.  Taking an even longer-term perspective, ITEP finds that Maryland’s inflation-adjusted gas tax rate has historically averaged 41.1 cents per gallon.  If the Governor’s plan is enacted, the inflation-adjusted rate over the next decade would average just 31 cents.

Note to Readers: This is the fifth of a six part series on tax reform trends in the states, written by The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).  Previous posts in this series have provided an overview of current trends and looked in detail at “tax swaps,” personal income tax cuts and progressive tax reforms under consideration in the states.  This post focuses on one of the most debated tax issues of 2013: raising state gasoline taxes to pay for transportation infrastructure improvements.

States don’t tend to increase their gas tax rates very often, mostly because lawmakers are afraid of being wrongly blamed for high gas prices.  The result of this rampant procrastination is that state gas tax revenues are lagging far behind what’s needed to pay for our transportation infrastructure.  Until last week, the last time a state gas tax increase was signed into law was three and a half years ago—in the summer of 2009—when lawmakers in North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia all agreed that their gas tax rates needed to go up, albeit modestly in some cases.  (Since then, some state gas taxes have also risen due to provisions automatically tying the tax to gas prices or inflation.)

But Wyoming was the state that ended the drought when Governor Matt Mead signed into law a 10 cent gas tax increase passed by the state’s legislature.  And Wyoming is not alone.  In total, lawmakers in nine states are seriously considering raising (or have already raised) their gas tax in 2013: Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. And until recently, Virginia appeared poised to increase its gas tax, too.In addition to Governor Mead, Republican governors in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Democratic governors in Massachusetts and Vermont have proposed raising their state gas taxes despite the predictable political pushback that such proposals seem to elicit.  The plans under discussion in these four states are especially reform-minded since they would not just raise the gas tax rate today, but also allow it to grow over time as the cost of asphalt, concrete, machinery, and everything else the gas tax pays for grows too.

In New Hampshire, meanwhile, Governor Hassan has said that the state needs more funding for transportation and is open to the idea of raising the gasoline tax, among other options.  The state House is debating just such a bill right now.  The situation is similar in Maryland where Governor O’Malley, who pushed for a long-overdue gasoline tax increase last year, recently met with legislators to discuss a gas tax increase proposed this year by Senate President Mike Miller.  Washington State Governor Jay Inslee has also not ruled out an increase in the gas tax—an idea backed by the state Senate majority leader and the House Transportation Committee chair.  And in the Hawkeye State, Governor Branstad once described 2013 as “the year” to raise Iowa’s gas tax (which happens to be at an all-time low, adjusted for inflation), although he has since said that he would support doing so only after lawmakers cut the property tax.

Other states where gas tax increases have gotten a foothold so far this year include Minnesota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, though it’s not yet clear how far those states’ debates will progress in 2013.

Across the country, no state has received more attention this year for its transportation debates than Virginia, where Governor Bob McDonnell kicked off the discussion by actually proposing to repeal the state’s gasoline tax.  But while Governor McDonnell’s idea was certainly attention-grabbing, it also failed to gain traction with most lawmakers, and the Virginia Senate responded by passing a bill actually increasing the state gasoline tax and tying it to inflation.  Since then, the preliminary details of an agreement being negotiated between House and Senate leaders are just now emerging, but early indications are that the legislature will try to cut the gas tax in the short-term, but allow the tax to rise alongside gas prices in the future.  The size of the cut will also depend on whether Congress enacts legislation empowering Virginia to collect the sales taxes owed on online purchases.

It’s good to see Virginia lawmakers looking toward the long-term with reforms that will allow the gas tax to grow over time.  But asking less of drivers through the gas tax today—when the state is facing such serious congestion problems—is fundamentally bad tax policy.  For more on the merits of the gas tax and the reforms that are needed to improve its fairness and sustainability, see Building a Better Gas Tax from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

Perhaps he was just floating a trial balloon when Governor Bob McDonnell said he was open to increasing Virginia’s gas tax in some way.  If so, it seems to have been a lead balloon because this week he announced his intention to eliminate the gas tax altogether.

But, experts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have concluded that the Commonwealth’s gas tax actually needs to be raised by 14.5 cents per gallon, right now, just to make up the revenue ground it’s lost having been stagnant for a quarter century.

Calling the gas tax an unviable revenue source (which is true only when lawmakers like McDonnell fail to modernize it!), the Governor proposed replacing it by raising the sales tax (from 5 percent to 5.8 percent) and increasing vehicle registration fees by $15 for most vehicles and $100 for alternative fuel vehicles.

McDonnells’ plan is riddled with flaws. For starters, this “tax swap” shifts the responsibility for paying for roads away from frequent and long-distance drivers (and the owners of heavier passenger vehicles), onto everybody else.  He very literally gives drivers a “free ride” by eliminating the gas tax, likely leading to more congestion, more wear-and-tear on roads, more air pollution and probably even excessive sprawl in the long run.

Oddly, by repealing only the gasoline tax and leaving the diesel tax untouched, his plan also discriminates sharply between motorists depending on the type of fuel they use to fill up.  The aim here is clearly to continue requiring the trucking industry to pay for their use of the roads (since heavy, diesel-powered trucks produce a disproportionate amount of wear-and-tear, as the Governor understands).  But many light trucks, vans and even some passenger vehicles run on diesel as well, and owners of these vehicles will see their sales taxes rise but won’t see any benefit from the gas tax cut.

McDonnell’s plan also does nothing to improve the fairness of Virginia’s taxes from a progressivity perspective, since both gas and sales taxes are regressive.  If the Governor were instead using a progressive income tax increase to fund transportation, at least he could argue that his plan improves Virginia taxes from an ability-to-pay perspective, even if it makes tax fairness much worse from a “benefits principle” (PDF) perspective—that is, a taxing in accordance with the benefits a given taxpayer receives.

Aside from the changes in tax policy, the Governor’s plan includes an expensive bailout of the transportation fund, when that fund could easily be fixed through gas tax reform.  The legislature has rejected such bailouts in the past for the very good reason that the state can’t afford to spend less on education and the other services which will necessarily have to be cut to fund McDonnells’ bailout.

Last night Americans in states from coast to coast cast their ballots on a wide range of tax and budget issues.  On the whole, they should feel proud of their choices.

Generally, just as voters nationally favored a presidential candidate who supports higher taxes on the best-off Americans and made tax fairness a centerpiece of his candidacy, when given the opportunity at the state level to raise taxes on, or reject tax cuts for, the wealthy, voters overwhelmingly were on the side of fairness. In California Governor Jerry Brown’s revenue raising plan, which increases income taxes on the richest Californians and raises the sales tax by a quarter cent, passed handily. Californians also voted to repeal a special billion-dollar tax break for multi-state corporations. In Oregon, voters shot down a measure that would have repealed the state’s estate tax and allowed family members to transfer property tax-free. Oregonians also voted to eliminate the state’s “corporate kicker” refund program. Instead of providing a tax rebate to corporate income taxpayers when total corporate tax revenues exceed expectations, now that excess revenue will be used to support K-12 education.

The vote on the Oregon “kicker” refund was part of a broader rejection of measures designed to strangle future revenue growth in the states.  Voters in Florida rejected both a “TABOR” style state tax limitation and a cap on local property tax increases. Michigan voters decisively rejected a measure that would have required a two-thirds vote of each legislative chamber to eliminate any tax break or raise any tax rate.  And New Hampshire voters opted not to ratify a constitutional amendment that would have handcuffed future lawmakers by banning them from ever enacting a tax on earned income (which the state does not currently levy).

Unfortunately, some lower-profile efforts to curb state revenue growth met with success.  Oklahoma slightly tightened an existing cap on its property tax, and Arizona created a new property tax cap. Washington voters also approved a statutory change requiring a supermajority vote of the legislature to raise taxes, though since the requirement is not enshrined in the state’s constitution it’s possible for lawmakers to work around it as they have similar limitations in the past.

Proposals to increase taxes that fall most heavily on middle- and low-income Americans, like the sales tax and cigarette tax, generally didn’t fare as well as the more progressive tax plan put before California voters. In Arizona and South Dakota, measures that would have increased the sales tax rate were rejected handily, and Missouri voters rejected a measure that would have hiked the cigarette tax. Arkansas voters, however, gave their approval to a half cent sales tax increase that state lawmakers had already passed.

Below is a complete listing of the results for the state tax ballot initiatives we’ve been following:

Arizona Proposition 204 FAILED
Proposition 204 would have made permanent a temporary 1 percent sales tax increase that voters approved in 2010, and that is scheduled to expire in mid-2013.

Arizona Proposition 117 PASSED
Proposition 117 limits property taxes by preventing the taxable assessed value of properties from rising by more than 5 percent per year.

Arkansas Issue #1  PASSED
Issue #1 amends the Arkansas constitution to allow for a temporary increase in the state’s sales tax to pay for large-scale transportation needs like highways, bridges, and county roads.

California Proposition 30 PASSED and Proposition 38 FAILED
Governor Jerry Brown’s revenue raising measure, Proposition 30, won handily while the rival revenue raising proposal was defeated.  Proposition 30 will raise significant revenue to stave off cuts to education through a tax hike on wealthy Californians and sales tax increase.

California Proposition 39  PASSED
California voters supported Proposition 39 which repeals a billion dollar tax break for multi-national corporations.

Florida Amendment 3 FAILED
Amendment 3 would have created a Colorado-style TABOR (or “Taxpayer Bill of Rights”) limit on state revenue growth, based on a formula tied to population and cost-of-living growth.

Florida Amendment 4 FAILED
Amendment 4 would have cut property taxes for businesses, non-residents, and Floridians with multiple homes by capping growth in the taxable value of their properties at no more than 5 percent per year.

Michigan Proposal 5 FAILED
Proposal 5 would have amended the state constitution to require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate to raise revenue either by increasing tax rates or eliminating special tax breaks.

Missouri Proposition B FAILED
Proposition B would have increased the state’s cigarette tax by 73 cents to 90 cents a pack.

New Hampshire Question 1 FAILED
Voters rejected Question 1 which would have enshrined a permanent ban on taxing earned income into the Granite State’s constitution.  New Hampshire is already one of nine states without a broad-based personal income tax.

Oklahoma State Question 758 PASSED
State Question 758 tightens the state’s property tax cap by limiting increases in home’s taxable assessed value to 3 percent per year, rather than the previous limit of 5 percent.

Oklahoma State Question 766 PASSED
State Question 766 creates a new exemption for certain corporations’ intangible property, such as mineral interests, trademarks, and software.

Oregon Measure 84 FAILED
Voters rejected Measure 84 which would have eliminated the state’s inheritance and estate tax and allowed for tax-free property transfers between family members.

Oregon Measure 85 PASSED
Voters approved Measure 85 choosing to eliminate Oregon’s “corporate kicker” refund program which provides a rebate to corporate income taxpayers when total state corporate income tax revenue collections exceed the forecast by two or more percent. Now, the excess revenue above collections will go to the state’s General Fund to support K-12 education.

Oregon Measure 79 PASSED
Measure 79 constitutionally bans the state from levying real estate transfer taxes and fees even though such taxes are currently nonexistent in Oregon.

South Dakota Initiated Measure #15 FAILED
Initiated Measure #15 would have raised the state’s sales tax by one cent, from 4 to 5 percent. The additional revenue raised would have been split between two funding priorities: Medicaid and K-12 public schools.

Washington Initiative 1185  PASSED
Initiative 1185 requires a supermajority of the legislature or a vote of the people to raise revenue.

Over 30 million Americans will take to the roads this Memorial Day weekend, and it’s all but guaranteed that many of them will be unhappy about the price of gas.  But while it’s easy to get frustrated by high prices at the pump, it’s also important that motorists realize gas taxes are not to blame for those high prices, and that gas taxes are absolutely essential to the safety and efficiency of the infrastructure we use everyday.

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) explains in a pair of new policy briefs, federal and state gas taxes are the main sources of funding for the roads, bridges, and transit systems that keep our economy moving (and that make our summer vacations possible).  Roughly 90 percent of federal transportation revenues come from the federal gas tax, while state gas taxes are the single most important source of transportation revenue under the control of state lawmakers.

Moreover, the amount of money we’re spending on gas taxes is much lower than what we used to pay. Families today are spending a smaller share of their household budgets on gas taxes than they have in about three decades—and that share is continuing to decline.

Of course, a low gas tax has a cost.  The federal government is increasingly using borrowed money to pay for our roads and bridges, while states that lack the luxury of borrowing are taking money away from education and other priorities in order to fund basic road repairs.  Meanwhile, even with these infusions of cash, the condition of our transportation infrastructure is continuing to decline.

ITEP’s new policy briefs put this issue into perspective by explaining how gas taxes work, their importance as a transportation revenue source, the specific problems confronting gas taxes, and the types of gas tax reforms that are needed to overcome these problems.

Read More:

• The Federal Gas Tax: Long Overdue for Reform (2-page brief)
• State Gasoline Taxes: Built to Fail, But Fixable (2-page brief)
• Building a Better Gas Tax (ITEP’s 50-state report from December 2011)

Photo of man pumping gas via Teresia Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0